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Ein Karem is an ancient village that’s now a neighborhood of Jerusalem. Tradition says St. John the Baptist was born there.
Introduction to Ein Karem
Ein Karem, also spelled Ein Kerem, translates to the Spring of the Vineyard in both Hebrew and Arabic. It was an important Jewish village during the late Second Temple period, and was inhabited by Palestinians during the Ottoman and British Mandate periods. The Palestinians were forced out during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and it became a Jewish village once again. Today, Ein Karem is a Bohemian neighborhood as well as a religious pilgrimage site. It’s regarded for its authenticity and natural surroundings.
Our Experience at Ein Karem
Our group was only given about 90 minutes of free time at Ein Karem after visiting the stops below. We decided it would be best to have lunch at this time, so we ate at Karma before hopping on the bus back to the Old City. Next time, we plan to visit the other churches in the area.
Greek Orthodox Church of St. John the Baptist
While there are lots of churches in Ein Karem, our group only had time to visit one. We stopped into the Greek Orthodox Church of St. John the Baptist. It sits near a Franciscan church of the same name which is regarded as the actual birthplace of the saint.
The Church of St. John the Baptist was built in 1894 atop the ruins of an ancient church. It’s owned by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
The interior walls of the church are covered with beautiful frescoes of saints and scenes of the life of Jesus and St. John the Baptist. There’s also a finely carved wooden iconostasis and throne.
Some of the notable icons and frescoes depict scenes of the life of St. John. They include the Visitation, when the Virgin Mary came to meet his mother Elizabeth while both were pregnant (Luke 1:39-56); the birth of St. John the Baptist; and the murder of his father, Zechariah, by Herod’s soldiers, for not revealing the whereabouts of his son during the Massacre of the Innocents.
Mary’s Spring
Next, we walked to Mary’s Spring. According to a Christian tradition that began in the 14th century, the Virgin Mary drank water from the spring and met Elizabeth there. The spring is actually the end of an ancient aqueduct.
The former Muslim inhabitants of Ein Karem built a mosque and madrasa on top of the spring around 1828. The minaret still exists. Baron Edmond James de Rothschild (1845-1934) had the spring repaired and renovated.
